Three-day Scarborough Street festival aims to attract more visitors to the Yorkshire coast

Scarborough Streets will involve outdoor performances, events, workshops, murals and more on the Bank Holiday weekend, May 4 to 6.

Throughout the weekend there will be a variety of street performances, from circus acts and puppetry to dance and theatre with the town’s streets jam-packed with entertainment.

Scarborough Streets is one of several high-profile events lined up for the town this year, as part of the Scarborough Fair Festival, including Scarborough Fringe in June and Scarborough Art which runs from the middle of June into early August.

North Yorkshire Council’s assistant director for culture and leisure, Jo Ireland, said: “Following on from Scarborough Lights, this latest event is part of our plan to place the town at the heart of the cultural and artistic calendar.

“It is about bringing the arts to the people and making them accessible for all.”

The over-arching Scarborough Fair initiative is being revived as a year-round programme of arts, heritage, music and sports events and is expected to run until 2026, to help boost North Yorkshire’s tourism industry.

Stand-out performers at Scarborough Streets include Phileas Fogg, who will wow visitors with their roving performance fusing modern technology and the classic Jules Verne novel, Around the world in Eighty Days, and Beetlebug, a musician with more than 100,000 followers on social media.

On Bank Holiday Monday, there will be a walkabout parade led by Animated Objects.

They will be joined by many of the acts and those who have attended workshops over the weekend.

Elsewhere, two audio trails have been created called What the Sea Saw and the Wilfred Owen Walk.

The first reflects on the town’s fishing heritage from the 1950s up to the present day, while the latter follows in the footsteps of the famous English war poet who spent time in the town and includes excerpts from his work.

Outdoor murals will also appear across the town, including a stylised map of Scarborough opposite the railway station and a piece entitled Celebrating Diversity at the Falsgrave Community Resource Centre, Seamer Road.

A third mural, known as the Limonade Mural Project, will feature at Big Maya’s Jerk Chicken on Hoxton Road and a piece by Turn Up The Colour, called We See With Our Hearts Not Our Eyes, will be at Yorkshire Coast Sight Support on Dean Road.

One of the organisations taking part in the festival is inkahoots!, a community interest company based in the town.

They will be performing pieces created as part of The Brave Project, an initiative funded in part by the Children and Young People’s Dance Network North.

The Brave Project is designed to encourage boys and young men to explore their physical, expressive and creative capabilities through dance, sport, martial arts and physical theatre.

Scarborough Fringe, which runs between June 21 and 30, is the first such event to be held in the town and will feature theatre, music, comedy, spoken word, children’s shows and a variety of other events and performances.

Scarborough Art, meanwhile, will be held between June 15 and August 4 and is a combination of exhibitions and workshops taking place at various venues across Scarborough and beyond.